You would still have advertising, but less incentive to collect data on individuals.
I would love to hear feedback / criticism on this idea.
how do you define targeted though? General definition would make almost all of the political ads illegal.
Putting an ad on a bench of a district where 70% of the >100K residents belong to a certain interest group is targeted, but in a way that is obvious to anyone and fair.
Sending online or mailed ads to people who belong to the intersection of three or more groups, as identified by signals that are difficult to observe (shopping habits, search history, social media interactions) is a line I think most consider wrong to cross.
You can get a reasonable approximation of that targeting in real life as well, but it is harder to hide that that is what you’re doing. Whereas with online targeting you are never aware that the other ads exist.